A People’s Agenda for Ontario: Platform of the Communist Party in the 2011 Ontario election!

Good Jobs for All!

• Fair trade, not free trade – protect Canadian jobs and sovereignty
• Nationalize US Steel and restart Canada’s basic steel industry
• Build public transit and a Canadian car that’s small, affordable, fuel efficient and environmentally sustainable
• Expand value-added manufacturing and secondary industry: build a machine tool industry, appliance industry, agricultural implements, and ship-building
• Rebuild aging provincial-municipal infrastructure
• Expand public services and social programs
• Enact plant closure legislation with teeth
• Enact a shorter work week with no loss in take-home pay 90

Raise Wages and Living Standards!

• Raise the minimum wage to $19
• Rescind the public sector wage freeze
• Raise pensions, lower the voluntary age to 60
• Introduce a livable Guaranteed Annual Income
• Immediately double social assistance and disability rates; eliminate claw-backs; restore the Special Diet Allowance
• Protect wages and pensions in bankruptcy proceedings
• Fight to increase EI to 90% of previous earnings for the duration of unemployment; cover all unemployed

Expand Labour and Democratic Rights!

• Call a Public Inquiry into the G20
• Put police under civilian control
• Enact anti-scab laws; ban strikebreaking
• Extend labour rights and protections to rural and farm workers, migrants, and temporary foreign workers
• Enact a Labour Bill of Rights guaranteeing the right to strike, picket and organize 56

Enact Democratic Electoral Reform!

• Enact Proportional Representation – Make every vote count!
• Lower the voting age to 16
• Sharply reduce election spending limits
• Allow permanent residents to vote in local elections 34

Strengthen Health and Safety Laws!

• Enforce stronger health and safety laws
• Reform Workers’ Compensation to protect injured workers; substantially increase compensation 23

Enact Public Auto Insurance Now!

Affordable Housing and Rents

• Build 200,000 units of affordable social housing over 5 years
• Increase funding for shelters, transition housing
• Legislate real rent controls and a Tenants’ Bill of Rights
• Eradicate mould and bedbugs
• No evictions or utility cut-offs due to unemployment, strike or lock-out
• Stop the sell-off of public housing and land

Quality Public Health Care

Stop privatization – end Public Private Partnerships

• Enforce the Canada Health Act. Ban private clinics. Abolish LHINs
• Reverse delisting. Cover dental, eye care, drugs, and long-term care
• Deliver needs-based funding for public hospitals and healthcare. Rescind balanced budget legislation
• Recognize the credentials of internationally trained physicians and healthcare workers

Universal, Quality Public Education

• Fund one universal, quality, public, secular school system, open to all
• Deliver a needs-based funding formula
• Expand Early Learning to every school
• Ban user fees and fund-raising for school essentials; stop the fire-sale of public schools and land
• End standardized testing and streaming
• Reduce class size, enact equity in staffing and curriculum
• Adequately fund adult and continuing education
• Strengthen local autonomy and democracy

Accessible Post Secondary Education

• Eliminate tuition fees
• Increase funding for universities and colleges
• Stop streaming universities into research or teaching
• End corporate incursions

Universal Quality, Public Childcare

• Build an accessible, affordable, quality, public childcare system
• Implement $7 per day / per child fees
• Create thousands of subsidized childcare spaces now
• Require ECE diplomas for childcare workers; raise wages

Full Equality for Women

• Legislate universal pay and employment equity; close the gap
• Make abortion services universally accessible in free standing clinics and all hospitals. Stop Hudak’s anti-choice agenda
• Introduce legislation and programs to end violence against women

Just Settlement of Aboriginal Land Claims

• Push for just settlement of Aboriginal land claims; stop Hudak’s plan to end Aboriginal land reclamations by force
• Recognize Aboriginal self-government and self-determination
• Act now to improve health, education and living standards of Aboriginal peoples

A New Financial Deal for Municipalities

• Deliver adequate, stable funding in statutory grants, or provide cities with the powers to tax corporate wealth
• Transfer 50% of gas and road-user taxes to cities
• Cut property taxes by 75% – upload education, health, housing, welfare and public transit costs
• Fight for status for municipalities in Canada’s Constitution

A Transportation Policy for People

• Increase federal-provincial funding for public transit
• Create a crown corporation to build public transit systems and rolling stock
• Expand GO Transit service and routes; reduce fares
• Abolish road tolls; expand light rail transit
• Restore transit workers’ right to strike

Tax the greedy, not the needy

• Repeal the HST. Abolish retail sales taxes
• Introduce a progressive tax system based on ability to pay
• Eliminate taxes on incomes under $40,000
• Double corporate income tax rates and rescind tax cuts
• Restore the capital tax; raise capital gains taxes
• Collect billion$ in unpaid corporate taxes
• Enact wealth and inheritance taxes on estates over $750,000

Equality Rights for All

• End racial profiling
• Enforce hate crime laws
• Strengthen equity in education, employment, healthcare and housing
• Support gay-straight alliances in Ontario schools
• Enact transgendered rights; provide legal funding to court challenges
• Fight to eliminate racist immigration and refugee laws

Energy and Environmental Policies for Future Generations

• Nationalize energy and natural resources
• Develop publicly-owned solar, wind and thermal energy; phase out nuclear and coal fired power; protect jobs
• Develop an east-west power grid and two-price system for export and domestic use
• Cut residential hydro rates by 50%
• Stop the sell-off of municipally-owned utilities
• Demand closure of the Alberta Tar Sands

Enhance Food Security! Protect Farm Communities!

• Stop bank foreclosures
• Guarantee long-term, low-cost loans to family farms, co-ops
• Protect marketing boards; guarantee prices and affordable farm inputs
• Abolish factory farming and genetically modified food
• Fight for Canada’s food sovereignty and security
• Roll back prices on food essentials
• Protect farmland from urban sprawl, landfills

Jobs – Not Bombs!

• Get out of Libya and Afghanistan now
• Withdraw from NATO and NORAD
• Convert military to civilian spending